


Third Time's A Charm

by EverestV



Series: Playing The Hand Dealt (Punkcop Prompt Fills) [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, angsty though I must warn you friends, just a little oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 07:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3479006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverestV/pseuds/EverestV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: blood<br/>Beth might be a bit more than just clumsy...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Time's A Charm

“B-Beth, what the hell?!”

“You’ll never believed what happened at work today!” Beth exclaimed excitedly as she pushed through the front door and past Sarah’s wide-eyed expression. “You know how we were doing that one case where the guy—”

“It’s late. It’s really late. Beth.” Sarah grabbed her shoulders and pulled her away from the fridge, trying to get her to focus. “Wanna tell me why you’re bleeding instead?” She swiped away at a cut on Beth’s cheek.

“Oh did it start again? It was fine a while ago...” Beth evaded her grip and moved to the sink, running warm water and dabbing at her cheek with a wet towel. “But yeah, I was getting to that. I might have fallen on my face at some point.”

“You...” Sarah, who had switched focus to the twin holes at Beth’s knees, looked back up at her. “You what?”

Beth returned to addressing the fridge, one hand continuing to press at her cheek as the other grabbed the neck of a beer bottle. “Fell on my face, yeah. Dipshit wouldn’t stop laughing the whole ride back to the station. But it’s a great story, I swear!”

Sarah had walked away. “I don’t doubt it,”

“Where you going? Don’t you wanna hear it?”

“You need permission of all a sudden?” She mumbled as she reached the bathroom and started rummaging through the medicine cabinet. _What did S say? Wash, neosporin, plaster. Right? Seems too simple._ Sarah bit her lip as she tried to remember her foster mother’s lesson in patching up clumsy wards. Beth and Kira seemed to have equally terrible relationships with asphalt.

“Fine. Damn.” Beth had hopped up on the kitchen counter when Sarah came back, sipping from her beer at her leisure. Despite her incessant cut, the towel lay dejected next to her. “As I was saying. I told you about how Art dumped me on that stupid ATM robbery, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah ran the towel under the sink again before getting to work and dabbing at Beth’s cheek herself. She winced.

“Ah! Careful!” Beth exclaimed but Sarah just rolled her eyes and opened up the neosporin. “So yeah. He’s walking me down there to talk to the security guys because apparently I can’t walk down the street by myself and—”

“Is this not a story about you falling on your face?”

Beth looked accusatory. “You are the bane of storytelling!”

“I do try.” After patching up her cheek, Sarah moved on to Beth’s knees.

“ _Anyway_.” Beth continued with a huff. “We get there and I’m just about to go into their offices or whatever and this guys rounds the corner and he looks totally familiar. So I point him out to Art and he just glares at me, actually stabs me with his eyes, and says, ‘That’s the subject, Childs! What are you doing?!’ So of course, I start running after the guy, thinking Art is right behind me since the whole point of partners is they provide back-up, right? Wrong. No. I’m running and turning around the corner so I don’t know what’s ahead and all of a sudden this _dog_ comes out of nowhere!” She swung her arms out for effect and Sarah just barely dodged the gesture, smearing neosporin all over her patient’s pants. Beth didn’t notice. “And it’s all freaking out and barking and excited, I guess, since they guy had just run past it and then so am I. So it’s all jumping at me and wagging its stupid tail and I’m trying to get around it but the thing’s moving so much, I don’t see the leash coming at me.”

“Wait, wait.” Sarah looked up from working on the second knee, laughing a little under her breath. “Aren’t you an, I don’t know, _detective_? Shouldn’t you have grade A observation skills or whatever?”

Beth fixed her with a steel gaze. “Bane. Of. Storytelling.” Sarah just laughed as she put on the last bandaid and settled in to listen. She took a second to look Beth over for any more cuts or scrapes, but found a satisfactory lack of blood. That was all she needed.

\---

Beth’s phone was ringing. Beth’s _work_ phone was ringing. And Sarah made a point about stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to growl at the damn thing.

“No.”

“Sarah,”

“ _No_.” Beth wouldn’t meet her gaze and Sarah grabbed her wrist. “I’m starving. You’re starving. You probably just had coffee and a muffin for lunch and I skipped mine entirely. It was a shite week for both of us. We _both_ need this.”

“No, I know, I know.” Beth typed in her screen lock password one-handed. “But it’s work, I can’t just...Detective Childs.” Sarah groaned out loud and frowned angrily at the restaurant a single block away. _So bloody close too._ “Goddammit. It’s because of some stupid rookie clause, isn’t it? ...shut up. I’m on my way... I got it, I got it.” She hung up and glanced at Sarah sheepishly.

“ _Beth_ ,”

“I have to go, but I’ll be back.” Beth leaned in to kiss Sarah’s cheek.

“How am I supposed to believe—”

“I promise. Go eat without me. It shouldn’t take too long and I’ll pick you up afterwards, alright?”

“But it’s—” _It’s no bloody use. Off duty means nothing to those idiot cops._ Sarah watched as her girlfriend raced back to where they had parked the car.

Fear hardly registered with her for too long. If there was a problem in front of her, Sarah would rather take the time to punch its lights out first and worry about being scared once it was all over. But standing by and doing nothing while Beth went out running after armed suspects and being forced into high-speed car chases, all because she was the rookie and apparently needed the experience, was infuriating. And more anxiety-inducing than Sarah had expected.

Beth thought she was being paranoid, Felix thought she was being paranoid, even S was talking to her about grey hairs and all that shite. But whether they were right or not, Sarah couldn’t get the image out of her head: Beth sitting in a car that had crashed into a median, a slow trickle of blood running down her temple, paramedics wondering why the air bags hadn’t gone off instead of fussing over her because her eyes are open but she’s not _moving_.

She’d admit that tripping and getting a few scrapes and bruises wasn’t something to call the lieutenant about, but it can only get worse from there, right? She tried hard not to think about it.

Later that night: after dealing with Alison’s never-ending questions when she pick her up from the restaurant, after trying Beth’s phone over and over again without an answer, after pacing the expanse of their apartment until she swore there was indentations on the rugs, after making a considerable dent in their liquor cabinet, Sarah couldn’t help but fling herself into Beth’s arms the second she walked through the door.

She wasn’t mad, she didn’t banish Beth to the couch, she didn’t say much of anything, really. She was too busy checking every inch for injuries hidden by clothes and hair. She only let the two of them go to bed once she was completely satisfied Beth was in one piece.

\---

Sarah milled around the kitchen aimlessly, too early to be fully awake, but too tired to be completely functional. Beth was all business as usual, whirling around the island and whisking in and out of rooms. Sarah would blink and suddenly she’d be gone.

“Hey, um,” she said when Beth took a moment to catch her breath and slip her coat on. “Are you gonna be late tonight?”

Beth turned to face her. Slowly, as if purposefully drawing out the action. “You know I don’t know that,”

“Right, but what do you _think_?”

Beth took one look at Sarah’s face—eyes half-lidded with grogginess, mouth slacked open in a half-hearted yawn—and it was enough. She managed a soft, easy smile. “It should just be a paperwork day, but if anything comes up I’ll try my best to get DeAngelis to do it. I’ll even try and volunteer Raj if I think it’ll help.” She went over softly, the relative silence of their apartment suddenly weighing on her. It was too _quiet_.

A chaste kiss later, and Beth was walking down the street to her car. Sarah, no doubt, went back to bed and Beth figured it was only fair for her to be the one enjoying the chance to sleep in. _Sunday,_ she told herself. _I’ll make sure we both sleep as long as we want._

“Ready?” Art asked her later in the day, handing her a navy vest and a serious expression. She just nodded.

 _Maybe Sunday we can finally go to that little family-run restaurant and have pancakes at 2 in the afternoon._ Checking that her gun was loaded, Beth went through the motions. Art drove. None of them said anything at first, but instead let the gravity of the situation fall on their shoulders.

“You know if I could have gotten you out of this, Childs—”

“Don’t. I know.” Beth shook her head and turned to the window.

They got there soon enough, and she wasn’t surprised to be faced with an ominous, abandoned-looking factory. The windows and doors were boarded up but they had a plan. They knew the floorplan. They weren’t going in blind. Or alone. Beth watched as other cars pulled up, as other officers adjusted their vests and checked their guns and steeled themselves in anyway else they could think of. _We could probably just stay in and watch a movie. Get some pizza delivered, spend the night on the couch. Sarah’d like that. I’d love that._

“Ready?” Beth could only give Art a curt nod before stepping out of the car and continuing to avoid his gaze. DeAngelis had no smug remark or knowing smirk today. Art was similarly silent. They and the others went in as a team, went in quiet, but Beth’s footsteps still sounded too loud against the hallowed backdrop of stillness. Arms stretched outward, two hands trying to keep steady, single finger at the ready, focus sharp and uncompromising, she was armed and ready and shaking.

 _In—one, two, three, four. Out—one, two. In—_ She counted her breaths. Counted them like they were all that mattered. The hand signals in front of her came second, the overwhelming bloodstream-roar in her ears came third, and fourth came: _I should probably figure out what movie to watch beforehand. Knowing us, we’d take the night just trying to decide alone. Hmm, rom com or horror. Maybe thriller? No, probably—_

Shouts sounded off like gunshots, bouncing and echoing against the walls, and everyone was pressed into a flurry of activity. Beth thought she would have had enough muscle memory for this. _In—onetwothreefour. Out—one, two. In—onetwothreefour. Out—onetwo._ Art raced past her, so did another officer, she knew she’d be at the back soon. She needed to stick with the group.

People were running, both the suspects and the team. Beth was jogging and counting, counting and jogging, over and over, keeping a rhythm. She was trying ~~not~~ to think. _Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Movie night Sunday. Lazy, lazy— holy shit._

There was a crash ahead of her, it was hard to tell if it was a gunshot or not. She tried harder to catch up to the uniform in front of her, knowing everyone else was around the corner. _Lazy, lazy, lazy Sunday. The laziest that’s humanly possible. I won’t even take—_

“Report!” Someone shouted. Someone she vaguely recognized. _In, out, in, out._ Officers shouted out their names and Beth stopped to catch her breath just inside the next room.

“Bell!” _In—one, two. Out—one, two. In—one, two. Out—one, two._

“Ch-Childs!” She called out after the pause became too pronounced. She was the last.

“Told you I’d keep you in one piece.” Art walked up and greeted her with a smile, almost too eager to ignore the suspects being rounded up and arrested in the middle of the room. “Saw you hung back for the most part. That’s alright, you know.”

Beth nodded, staring past his shoulder. “It’s over then?”

“It’s over. We just need to get these guys back to— ”

A crack sounded. An officer jerked and sunk to his knees. Art swung around. People scattered. Everything blurred into slow-motion.

Someone’s hand on her wrist was dragging her over to a stack of crates and she followed blindly, gaze reaching up to pin-point a gunman on the exposed second floor. He had clear shots and the advantage of higher ground. His gun was huge and long and a silencer laid ignored at his feet. He had cover. He had been ready.

Beth pressed her back against the wall once she had stopped moving, once Art had let her stop moving. He was having trouble getting the guy in his sights, but shot off round after round anyway. Ducking and weaving, in and out of the safety of the crates, shooting and waiting, he was all fluid motion.

“—see him? Beth? Beth!” He was shouting but so was everyone else. Guns were screaming away bullets, footsteps were yell-yell-yelling into the ground, glass shrieked when it shattered, bodies were bellowing as they hit the ground. It was too _loud_.

“I-I, um,” Beth fumbled with her gun, looked up at Art, stared down at her shaking hands, turned back to Art. She tried reading his lips.

“The shooter, Beth! Can you see him?”

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat and looked out from behind the crates. “Yeah, yeah, I think I see him.”

“You think?!”

“I do, I do, I—” Now she could _see_ the guns screaming, the footsteps yelling, the glass shrieking, the bodies bellowing. But most of all, she could see the blood roaring across the floor, feral and dense as it ran and pooled. All that blood. Her hands moved numbly and she found herself firing at the gunman’s cover. He met her gaze and the barrel of his gun swung around. It pointed at her.

_Definitely not watching a thri—_

\---

Sarah couldn’t have gone back to bed if she tried. Her eyelids hung low and her arms swung lazily and her thoughts floated around listlessly, but her fingers twitched and her feet wouldn’t stop taking her around the apartment. Once she _did_ stop, though, falling onto the couch and rubbing at her eyes and running a hand through her hair and stretching out her arms, she wished she hadn’t eliminated the distraction of movement. It was too _quiet—_

Her phone rang. It was the station.


End file.
